For overall talent and depth of champions and contenders...You can do it from an overall view from Heavy to Fly or specific divisions...What's your view?
From what I've heard and seen, seems like the ten years after the end of WWII would have to be the best. You had all these guys coming back from the war, alotta tough guys with not alot of options. I'd say 1945 to 1955, after the war but before television, when show-business had a negative effect, kind of like what MTV did to music, when it became more about the visual than the audial. Billy Conn, maybe the best light-heavyweight "boxer" of all time said back in the seventies, after boxing had been through a prolonged downturn, "What we need, (to bring boxing back to its glory days), is another world war." 'Course I gotta say, boxing technique, training methods, etc., like all sports, has improved steadily over the years, but you just don't have such a talent pool to draw from. How many guys actually want to step in that ring and then, do it again, if they don't absolutely have to?
By far the 1940s Willie Pep Henry Armstrong Ike Williams Sugar Ray Robinson Manuel Ortiz Sandy Saddler Ezzard Charles Archie Moore Billy Conn Joe Louis Jersey Joe Walcott Jimmy Bivins Elmer Ray Charley Burley Fritzie Zivic Albert Chalky Wright Jake Lamotta Lloyd Marshall Holman Williams Eddie Booker Jack Chase Marcel Cerdan Beau Jack Bob Montgomery Young Rocky Marciano
I agree with the 80's. Although other eras were better for individual various weight classes, the 80's had better variety across the board. The heavyweight division wasn't paricularly great, but it was at least decent with Holmes and Tyson. The lightheavyweight division saw men like Spinks, Qawi, Johnson, and Mustafa. The middleweight division had Hagler. The Welterweight division was by far and above the best as we had Leonard, Duran, Hearns, Benitez, Curry, Brown, Starling and several others. Again, I do not think that the 80's was the best decade for any one particular weight class, but it had reasonable talent and action in most of its divisions.
lets compare top 20 fighters of 1980s and top 20 fighters of the 1940s 1940s 1. Sugar Ray Robinson 2. Willie Pep 3. Henry Armstrong 4. Ezzard Charles 5. Joe Louis 5. Archie Moore 6. Sandy Saddler 7. Billy Conn 8. Ike Williams 9. Kid Gavilan 10. Charley Burley 11. Manuel Ortiz 12. Jersey Joe Walcott 13. Lloyd Marshall 14. Jake Lamotta 15. Marcel Cerdan 16. Holman Williams 17. Fritzie Zivic 18. Jimmy Bivins 19. Beau Jack 20. Eddie Booker top 20 of 1980s 1. Sugar Ray Leonard 2. Marvin Hagler 3. Pernell Whitaker 4. Salvador Sanchez 5. Wilfredo Gomez 6. Alexis Arguello 7. Tommy Hearns 8. Julio Cesar Chavez 9. Mike Tyson 10. Michael Spinks 11. Larry Holmes 12. Evander Holyfield 13. Aaron Pryor 14. Wilfredo Benitez 15. Roberto Duran 16. Mike Mccallum 17. Hector Camacho 18. Azumah Nelson 19. Donald Curry 20. Dwight Muhammad Qawi It is close, but 1940s is defintley better
That's a lovely pick. I take it these guys aren't in order, right? I mean, you have Pep above Robinson, no?
Come on. It's the 1940s -no contest. You had three of the usual top 5 all time priming during that decade... Robinson, Pep, and Armstrong... Consider the depth, the activity, the greater percentage of males involved in boxing due to lesser opportunities with other sports, more gyms, more clubs since it was before TV, more trainers, tougher men (having grown up during the Depression over here)... Let me ask this: Is there anyone over 40 who would choose the 80s? Some posters are nostalgic about their youth or their father's youth in the 80s, I suspect. Understandable, I'm sure, but a little research should change anyone's mind.
Make up head to head matches between the lists and break it down. Leonard vs Robinson Pep vs Sanchez Armstrong vs Arguello etc. It will be easier to determine the 40's versus the 80's
I agree it has to be the 40's to much talent to think many have Robinson, Armstrong, Pep, Charles and Moore in there top ten p4p and they all fought in the same era. The 20's also had a huge amount of talent.